The TMA Core at Johns Hopkins is a University Service Center/Shared Resource that is part of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and the Department of Pathology.

The TMA Core has constructed over 850 TMAs for over 50 investigators containing ~96,000 tissue cores from tumors from the prostate, breast, pancreas, gall bladder, cervix, ovary, brain, liver, urinary bladder, salivary glands, esophagus, head and neck, thyroid and various cell lines. Users have published over 150 manuscripts involving Johns Hopkins University TMAs.

Instrumentation is available to automatically capture high resolution digital images of TMA spots and perform semi-automated quantitative image analysis. Users have access to a set of Open Source and Aperio web-based software tools and backend database (TMAJ) that were developed to facilitate the all facets of research involving TMA technology from TMA design, data entry, image diagnosis, analysis, and publishing on the Internet. Recently we have incorporated comprehensive histology services into the TMA core by moving the Oncology Histology Lab into the TMA lab space. Also, we have incorporated immunohistochemistry and fluorescence in situ hybridization services into the TMA Core.

The TMA Core Facility does not currently charge users for storage of scanned whole slide images on our Spectrum server. Our current policy is to retain all compressed whole slide image files for a minimum of 5 years from the time they were scanned. The core will not provide any long term storage for uncompressed whole slide image files. Although best practices are followed to prevent loss of user data, the TMA Core Facility makes no guarantees about the accessibility or integrity of user data and accepts no responsibility for damages of penalties that result from data loss. If your digital scans are critical to your research projects, it is advised to request DVDs or provide an external hard drive to which the core can transfer your files. The TMA Core Facility reserves the right to delete any whole slide image files older than 5 years and to modify this digital image storage policy.